Workshop 1 - Setting up the model railway

To do:

1. Download iTunes from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ and subscribe to the “Learning Rails” Podcasts from http://www.buildingwebapps.com/podcasts
   
   
2. Install Ruby on Rails on your computer by using the material and downloads from http://www.rubyonrails.
   
   
3. Rather than get Ruby on Rails running manually, you use the pre-packaged solutions. These include everything in one bundle: Web server, database, Ruby, Rails, the works.


1. For OS X, there's Locomotive.
2. For Windows, there's Instant Rails.

1)
I already have i-Tunes so I don't need to download it.

Subscribed to the "Learning Rails" podcasts. They will send me an email every 3 days with a new lesson to listen to or watch. I am looking forward to the podcasts as I know absolutely nothing about Ruby on Rails at the moment. I have created a category called "Learning Rails Podcasts" and will comment on the lessons as I go along.

2) & 3)
I have just installed Ruby on Rails, Instant Rails.

I am using a virtual machine running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2.

There were some installation problems that I had to work through though to get it to work.
First off it had to be installed in a directory without spaces so I installed it at C:\InstantRails-2.0-win

Then I got the error - Apache port (80) is used by "" (inetinfo.exe) !
To fix this I stopped my default web site in IIS that was using port 80. I am not using this vm for anything else so that's OK for me. You can change the port to something else if you want to or you can change the httpd.conf file to make ruby use a different port.

Next I got the error - Error in the Apache configuration file
To fix this I altered the httpd.config to show the following DocumentRoot:
DocumentRoot "${path}"

instead of
DocumentRoot "${path}/www"

After doing both Apache and MySQL started.

Now I just need to learn how to drive it :)